I love International Tabletop Day, mainly because it provides me with an extra excuse to do stuff I was planning to do anyway. But this year, Atomic Empire celebrated one of my favorite days of the year by hosting an UnPub Mini event. So not only did I get to play board games, but I got to be a small part of the birth of several new board games!

UnPub Mini events are interesting because the prototype games are at very different stages of development. On Saturday, some people were displaying games with highly developed box art, while others had playing cards that consisted of printer paper stuffed into plastic sleeves. One developer had a Kickstarter campaign in the works, while others were in the process of talking to traditional publishers about their ideas. It was fun to see what local game designers were up to, and it had me wondering whether I'd walk into a game store one day and see a familiar looking title on the shelf...

The game that most caught my attention this weekend was called "Town Gate." It was an engine building game with a lot of interesting decisions to be made. The game wasn't particularly thematic—it was your basic medieval-type game—but I loved the tension caused by wanting to try so many things but only having limited actions to work with. I can see the game being very competitive among friends who understand the mechanics very well, and I love games that reward repeat plays. I would definitely be interested in trying "Town Gate" again.

I haven't been gaming too much recently because life hasn't been very accommodating. Between a crazy teaching year and a very active job search, I haven't had a lot of time to myself. Taking some time to enjoy myself on International Tabletop Day meant a lot to me because I got to feel like myself again for the first time in a while.